Computerized record keeping systems are well known in the financial and business community. In the field of financial and trust services, computerized record keeping systems are used extensively by many well-known providers, e.g., Fidelity Investments, T. Rowe Price, Vanguard, etc. Providers or Plan Sponsors typically provide their services and products to corporations, partnerships, sole proprietorships, and unions along with their employees and members, or participants.
Plan Sponsors offer 401(k) plans or other employee benefit plans to their employees for many reasons, including, for example, to attract and retain employees. Employee benefit plans offer employees a variety of benefits. These include a flexible way to save for retirement, current federal income tax savings on before-tax contributions, and tax-deferred retirement savings growth potential. Plan Sponsors engage service providers for a number of reasons, including because Plan Sponsors often do not have the expertise or internal resources to administer employee benefit plans. Service providers offer many products and services to Plan Sponsors, which may include providing, maintaining and supporting computerized record keeping systems for administering plans.
Typically, a plan is a composite of individual employee or participant data from a single Plan Sponsor, along with plan parameters, or collectively, plan data. Participant data is generally the whole record or file for an individual within a particular plan. The participant data includes indicative data such as name, Social Security number, birth date, and address, along with financial data such as current account balance information, investment fund information, etc. The plan parameters reflect plan provisions such as vesting, contribution, and eligibility provisions, along with administrative features such as investment fund options.
Typically, the record keeping systems used by service providers are computerized systems comprised of preferred computer or machine hardware and software applications that store, manipulate and process data and output information related to plans and their participants. For example, many existing record keeping systems use computerized databases and database management systems (DBMS), including associated hardware and software (both application and system software) to manipulate the information or data. Typical data inputs include Plan Sponsor payroll data, investment fund pricing information, and participant transaction records initiated through end-user interfaces. The end-user interfaces commonly include Internet, Intranet, interactive voice response (IVR) systems, customer service representatives, and desktop computer applications. Typical data outputs generally include Plan Sponsor administrative reports, financial trades, client and operational reports, data feeds sent to Plan Sponsors, and participant statements. Other appropriate and specific data inputs or outputs may be used as desired for a particular plan.
From time to time, service providers upgrade or replace their computerized record keeping systems in an effort to provide clients with faster, more efficient, more reliable and more cost-effective systems. As service providers replace existing record keeping systems with new or updated systems, the plans on its existing system must be converted and migrated to the new system.
Existing methods for conversion and migration of plans from legacy record keeping systems to new record keeping systems, e.g., from a PlanOne record keeping system to a record keeping system that uses a WyStar platform (systems well known in the industry and to those of skill in the art) commonly result in blackout periods during the migration process for clients and participants.
A blackout period is generally understood to mean the elimination or substantial curtailment of client or participant access to their plan or account during the period that their plan is being migrated from the legacy record keeping system to the new record keeping system. This blackout period particularly curtails the participant's ability to initiate transactions such as investment fund transfers, including buys and sells of investment fund holdings, for example.
The migration process is a lengthy process that, depending on the number of plans and the amount of plan data or information in each plan being migrated, can take many hours to days to complete. In order to minimize the blackout periods that result from existing migration methods, service providers often migrate plans over weekends or on business holidays. Heretofore, plan migration on or during a given business day has not been accomplished without engendering a blackout period.
There is thus a need for a novel migration process that allows for migration of plans from a legacy record keeping system to a new record keeping system that can occur on and during business days without the concomitant blackout periods associated with existing migration processes.